Doctor Who: The Mysterious Planet

Terrance Dicks

Sep 2013 · BBC Digital Audio · Narrated by Lynda Bellingham

About this audiobook

In this thrilling adventure - the start of the 'Trial of a Time Lord' story arc - The TARDIS has been taken out of time and the Doctor has been brought before a court of his fellow Time Lords. There the sinister Valeyard accuses the Doctor of breaking Gallifrey's most important law and interfering in the affairs of other planets. If the Valeyard can prove him guilty, the Doctor must sacrifice his remaining regenerations. To prove his case the Valeyard focuses on an adventure set in the Doctor's past. It is an adventure set on the planet Ravolox, a seemingly primitive world but one which the Doctor and Peri find strangely familiar... Lynda Bellingham, who played the Inquisitor in the Doctor Who serial The Trial of a Time Lord, reads Terrance Dicks' complete and unabridged novelisation, first published by Target Books in 1988.

About the author

Terrance Dicks (Author)
Terrance Dicks became Script Editor of Doctor Who in 1968, co-writing Patrick Troughton’s classic final serial, The War Games, and editing the show throughout the entire Jon Pertwee era to 1974. He wrote many iconic episodes and serials for the show after, including Tom Baker's first episode as the Fourth Doctor, Robot; Horror at Fang Rock in 1977; State of Decay in 1980; and the 20th anniversary special, The Five Doctors in 1983. Terrance novelised over sixty of the original Doctor Who stories for Target books, including classics like Doctor Who and the Abominable Snowmen and Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion, inspiring a generation of children to become readers and writers. He died in August 2019, only weeks before the publication of his final Doctor Who short story, ‘Save Yourself’, in The Target Storybook.

Lynda Bellingham (Reader)
Lynda Bellingham was a regular on ITV's Loose Women, appeared on BBC1's 2009 Strictly Come Dancing and also played the lead role in the stage version Calendar Girls - on the West End stage and touring the country. Her television career spanned over 40 years, and included All Creatures Great and Small, Doctor Who, Second Thoughts, Faith in the Future (Best Comedy 1997), At Home with the Braithwaites, The Bill and the much-loved role of 'Oxo Mum'. Finding love and happiness in later life, she married Michael Pattemore in 2008, the man known to Loose Women viewers as 'Mr Spain'.

Lynda was diagnosed with bowel cancer in 2013, and sadly passed away a year later aged 66.